Overlay zone isn’t about history

Regarding the Saturday article, “Preservation effort divides Everett’s oldest neighborhood’:

Riverside was founded at the end of 1891, but not a single house in the proposed Riverside overlay zone was built in the 1890s. Of the dozen or so houses in Riverside that were built during Everett’s founding, six are within two blocks of the zone. And there is a big difference in the historical significance of an 1890s building in Everett and one built in the early 20th century. In numbers, the ratio is greater than 50-to-1. So by comparison, the six 1890s homes within two blocks of the proposed overlay zone are worth at least 300 structures in the overlay zone, which contains only 450, according to your article.

The proposed zone was not created to protect history as its main aim, and that confused many people at the historical commission public hearing who asked how the boundaries were set. But the Riverside Neighborhood Association has been forthright about saying they created this proposal because they feared encroachment. Yet these zones should not be created to suit the residents, they should exist to leave a legacy for posterity.

It is ironic that the proposed overlay zone is the very place where the development of Bayside met the community of Riverside. Since there are no steamboats left, the last iconic thing the oldest community in Everett can pass on are Victorian homes. But in the proposed Riverside Historic Overlay, which is arguably not even in historic Riverside, there are no Victorian homes. I believe that the Riverside Neighborhood Association would be satisfied and the whole city present and future would be better off, if there was an ordinance that required a hearing about a building’s historical value before it is allowed to be razed, instead of this overlay zone.

Fred Josephson